Tag: francis carmont

Francis Carmont — or as they refer to him on the CME podcast, “Frankie Cars” — has experienced one of the more surprising career downswings of them all in recent months. A training partner of Georges St. Pierre up at Quebec’s Tristar gym, Carmont kicked off his UFC career with six straight victories, including wins over Costa Philippou, Chris Camozzi, and Lorenz Larkin to name a few. While his grapple-heavy style was never exactly crowd-pleasing (and some of his aforementioned victories overshadowed by questionable judging decisions), Carmont was steadily working his way toward becoming a top contender in the middleweight division according to many.

Then 2014 happened, and Carmont suddenly couldn’t buy a win. In successive appearances, he dropped a pair of unanimous decisions to Ronaldo Souza and CB Dollaway at Fight Night 36 and 41, respectively. If that wasn’t bad enough, poor Frankie Cars was then crumbled by the patented overhand right of Thales Leites (a.k.a Tally Lates) at Fight Night 49 last month, making it three straight losses for the once promising French Canadian.

And today, the news of Carmont’s release comes straight from the horse’s mouth, er, Facebook page:

And so, the UFC’s terrifying “two events in one goddamned day” campaign is officially underway. Luckily, the promotion is starting out slow, with a Fight Pass card in Berlin featuring a decent middleweight matchup (Mark Munoz vs. Gegard Mousasi) and a bunch of supporting fights that you couldn’t possibly care about. If you want to skip this one and come back later for the TUF Brazil 3 Finale liveblog, that’s totally fine. And if you want to skip that card as well, we can’t really blame you. I mean, for God’s sake, it’s Saturday. Invite your friends over for a barbecue. Spend time with your family. Read a book. Seriously, when was the last time you read a book? Remember how nice that was?

Since very few of you will be watching, we’ve decided to break in a new liveblogger to see how he performs under low pressure. So please give a warm welcome to our brand-new CagePotato Fight Pass Correspondent Bear Siragusa, who will be plugging live results from the UFC Fight Night 41 main card after the jump, beginning at 3 p.m. ET / noon PT. Refresh the page every few minutes for all the latest, and please shoot us your thoughts in the comments section or on twitter.

(If you squint and look at Machida’s torso, you will see the face of the old wizard who taught his dad karate. / Photo via MMAJunkie)

I’m a glutton for punishment. After being stranded in North Carolina for most of this week due to snowstorms, I finally got back to Michigan yesterday, exhausted and displaying possible flu-like symptoms. I feel jet-lagged even though I never left the Eastern time-zone. That’s what four straight meals at a Marriott bar will do to you.

So it’s Saturday night and I figured, instead of catching up on sleep, why don’t I liveblog a low-level international UFC show with a main card that could drag on well past 1 a.m. ET? I don’t know, man. In another time, I’d probably be self-flagellating.

I, BG, will be putting live results from the FOX Sports 1 main card after the jump beginning at 10:30 p.m. ET. Refresh the page every few minutes for all the latest, and shoot us your own thoughts in the comments section or via twitter.

(Uh-oh. Grizzled, unkempt Machida is easily the most dangerous of all Machidas. Photo via Getty.)

Lyoto Machida, Gegard Mousasi, and all 24 fighters competing on tomorrow’s ‘Fight Night 36′ card are set to hit the scales from the Arena Jaragua in Jaragua do Sul, Santa Catarina, Brazil starting at 1 p.m. EST. Although Fight Night 36 is eerily similar in quality to next weekend’s UFC 170 pay-per-view, it features neither Ronda Rousey nor the year’s biggest squash match and therefore will be free. No, I do not understand it either.

Souza’s recent TKO of Yushin Okami, gave him his second win in the UFC and his fifth-straight win overall; his last four fights have all ended by first-round stoppage. The former Strikeforce middleweight champion is quickly becoming a top UFC contender at 185 pounds, but to stay “in the mix,” he’ll have to find a way to beat Carmont, the French veteran who has gone 6-0 in the UFC since making his Octagon debut two years ago. Carmont most recently cruised to a unanimous decision win over Costa Philippou at UFC 165, using a takedown-heavy gameplan that Philippou clearly wasn’t expecting.

Though UFC Fight Night 36 was originally reported to take place on February 8th with a live broadcast on FOX Sports 2, the UFC decided to bump it back a week, and the event is now slated to air on FOX Sports 1.

Did Gustafsson get screwed, like Phil Davis would have you believe? Should an immediate rematch be booked between the Swede and the champ? Follow us below to find out what lies in store for Jon Jones and the rest of UFC 165′s biggest winners.

Jon Jones: I might be in the minority here, but I’m going to suggest that the UFC should hold off on booking an immediate Jones/Gustafsson rematch. Here’s why:

Round-by-round results from the UFC 165 pay-per-view broadcast will be accumulating after the jump beginning at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT, courtesy of your old pal BG. Refresh the page every few minutes for all the latest, drop your thoughts into the comments section, and swing by our Twitter page tonight for additional observations and yuk-yuks from CagePotato staff writer Matt Saccaro. Now let’s have some fun.

This is probably the greatest possible matchup involving two middleweights that you rarely think about. Quietly, both fighters have amassed five-fight win streaks in the Octagon dating back to 2011, with Philippou most notably defeating Boetsch, Court McGee, and Jorge Rivera, and Carmont scoring recent wins against Tom Lawlor and Lorenz Larkin. One of these guys is going to make it six in a row, and the other is going back to square one — a truly horrible place, indeed.

Shoot us your thoughts about this matchup in the comments section, and check out the current UFC 165 fight lineup after the jump…